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We’ll say it one more time for those in the back row: Election fraud is exceedingly rare. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has built a database of cases of voter fraud, has found very few cases in the 43 years it has been tracking the data. It is unclear if any of those cases impacted the outcome of an election.
This reality has not stopped people — most notably President Donald Trump — from repeatedly lying about fraud and proposing draconian means to end this phantom problem.
Trump has claimed for years that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, was rigged. Evidence, and numerous court cases, have shown this to be untrue. But that hasn’t dimmed Trump’s claims or his attempts to make voting harder for many Americans.
Now, a draft executive order has been circulated that lays out the steps Trump’s backers want him to take to restrict voting. The memo was largely pushed out of the news by the Trump administration’s attacks on Iran.
We can’t let this plan, and its impact on this year’s elections, be hidden.
It is now clear that the Trump administration has an outline for interfering with this fall’s election. They likely fear that a free and fair election will be bad for Republicans. So, rather than addressing the real concerns of Americans such as the high cost of living, rather than checking Trump’s worst impulses, too many Republicans are willing to restrict voting to maintain their hold on power.
The draft order would mandate voter ID, ban mail-in ballots and require that all votes be cast on paper ballots that are hand counted. These changes would be required for this year’s elections. A similar order that Trump signed last year has been rejected by numerous federal courts.
The administration is also trying to implement many of these changes through federal legislation, which remains in limbo in Congress. Versions of the bill, called the SAVE Act and Save America Act, have passed the House, but have stalled in the Senate. The newer version, the Save America Act, which Sen. Susan Collins supports, includes a nationwide voter ID requirements in addition to new, but unnecessary, requirements to prove citizenship when registering to vote. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in state and federal elections, but the act would require people to show a passport (which less than half of Americans have) or a birth certificate to prove U.S. citizenship. Women who changed their names because of marriage would also have to provide a marriage license.
Again, this is unnecessary because voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and attempts by non-citizens to vote are rarer still.
Earlier this week, Trump said he wouldn’t sign any legislation into law until the SAVE America Act is passed. That’s mostly a hollow threat because the Republican-led Congress isn’t passing legislation anyway.
In addition, Republican Senate leadership isn’t interested in changing Senate rules to pass the bill over unified Democratic opposition. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said last month that there was no reason for elections to be nationalized, saying our current system of state-run elections “works pretty well.
“It’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said. “So it, in my view, at least, that’s always a system that’s worked pretty well.”
Unable to get Congress to do his bidding, the Trump administration appears prepared to undermine our rights to vote on its own.
Under the guises of an emergency (don’t be surprised if Trump uses the military action he launched in Iran to claim the U.S. is threatened and that he needs to declare an emergency), elections could be federalized. That would give the federal government authority to set standards and override state election laws and practices.
It is totally unnecessary and unpopular with Americans. In November, Maine voters resoundingly rejected a ballot question that sought to restrict absentee voting and to require voter ID.
Many states, including Maine and some run by Republican governors, have been turning away demands for voter data from the Trump administration.
This pushback, and more, will be essential to stop the Trump administration from taking over our elections, and rigging them in their favor. If just a few states take the steps demanded in the draft executive order, the outcome of the November election could be swayed. That would be real election fraud.
